Markets Work: How Bolsa de Valores de Colombia Is Navigating COVID-19

Nasdaq is committed to the resiliency of the global market ecosystem during this time of unprecedented change in our industry. Our Market Technology community, which includes market infrastructure organizations spanning more than 50 countries, is truly keeping markets up and running. With exchanges laying the foundation for capital formation and job growth, these organizations will continue to play a critical role in the health and recovery of local economies around the world and greater global capital markets ecosystem.

We sat down with Bogdan Djoric, CIO of Bolsa de Valores de Colombia, to discuss how his exchange is managing the current environment for their stakeholders, members and employees.

1. How is COVID-19 affecting your client base? Are you changing how you interact and communicate as a result?

I think our clients have been affected in basically two ways. First, due to the economic uncertainty caused by the shutdown and low oil prices, there has been a lot of volatility, especially in the second half of March. Secondly, trading remotely from home has not always been the best user experience due to a latency of going through VPN to the brokers' offices and then to BVC. So we have seen some decline in traded volumes. The communication with clients has remained very fluid, and the meetings have obviously moved to web conferences.

2. How are your systems impacted by the current environment?

There has not been a lot of impact; however, we realize that moving services to the cloud has to be accelerated. We are currently finishing a PoC to move trading screens onto the cloud. The cloud offers a quick and easy way to provide access to our users, wherever they may be. It is becoming a trend and surely will be in the post-COVID-19 world.

3. How do you prepare for this type of situation to help ensure a resilient, operational environment?

We are working on improving our automation, monitoring and incorporating AIOps capabilities. We have also enhanced some security capabilities since the company perimeter is an ever more blurred concept. We want our clients to have ubiquitous and secure access to our services.

4. What are some of the things you’re most happy to have accomplished over the first part of this year amidst a truly chaotic market environment?

We have maintained our services with no downtime or degradation. Also, we have had a great opportunity to show everybody the importance of the digital transformation for companies' success or even sustainability. We have to be agile, think differently, and use technology and data to keep the businesses running even through very difficult times. The work of the BVC IT team has been very praised, and that keeps us very motivated.

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